I Could Write a Book
by WRTRD
Summary: While recovering from her shooting, Beckett comes up with an unusual way to make amends to Castle. Set after 3x24 "Knockout."
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

 _If they asked me, I could write a book  
_ _About the way you walk and whisper and look.  
_ —Lorenz Hart

If only Kate could reach, she'd pull down the hideous clock that hangs above the kitchen door and stomp it to death. She'd take it outside, dig a hole, and give it an unceremonious burial. The housing is red plastic and the hands are a fork and spoon. Whenever the fork drags over the top of the clock face, which happens twenty-four times a day, it makes a piercing, grating click. She braces herself for it five minutes before the change of each hour, that metallic, relentless reminder of the time she has wasted, is wasting as she recovers from her shooting. Each click feels like another regret burrowing into her gut. But she can't reach and she can't dig and she can't do fucking anything. Well, except for one thing, which is to host a full-scale pity party for one. No guests, just her. Who'd want to come, anyway? The only person she wants to see is the one she shut out. The only person she wants to talk to is the one she won't call. Castle.

She sent her father home a week ago, and now she's alone at the cabin. Everything hurts, inside and out, though she had told him that she was much, much better and was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. He probably hadn't bought it, but he had gracefully agreed to go back to the city and let her heal on her own terms. She's doing her exercises faithfully, so she is, in fact, a little physically stronger each day. But for every millimeter of muscular progress that she makes, she sinks at least that much deeper into her very own Slough of Despond.

The fork has just dragged and grated its way across the top of the clock, and the spoon is resting on 7. It's seven in the morning, the sun has been up for an hour and a half, and Kate has had it. Had it with pain and remorse and guilt and anger and whatever else is in her personal witch's brew. She pours herself another cup of coffee that she knows she shouldn't have, but it's the fuel she requires if she's going to do this. She takes her iPod, a notebook, and a pen and goes out to sit at the table on the deck. For the past week she has been overwhelmed by the need to make amends to Castle, but she has had no idea how to do it. Saying that she's sorry hardly covers it. The man has had her back for three years. Her back, and everything else. A month ago, he almost took a bullet—the one that left a hole in her chest—for her, and she turned him away. Let him think that she needed a couple of days to regroup, which might be the cruelest use ever of the don't-call-me-I'll-call-you directive. She is justifiably mortified every time she remembers it. She hasn't told him that she dumped Josh only minutes after her forlorn-looking sidekick had left her in the hospital; she has barely told herself.

The first step, which was surprisingly easy, was to admit that she is in love with Castle. Madly in love. The second, which was something of a step backward, was to hate herself for having to admit it, for not having rejoiced in it from the beginning. She has lost track of the apologies that she has considered and rejected over the course of the past seven days—the better part of 168 hours, since she is almost always awake. Every variation is excruciatingly inadequate: a case of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, a raft of flowers, an autographed first edition of _Atonement_ , dinner at Per Se, even letting him drive.

Then, at three o'clock this morning, something had happened. Sleepless as usual, Kate had left her bed and wandered into the living room. After she had turned on a light and dropped down onto the armchair where she planned to read _Heat Wave_ for the umpteenth time, her eye had wandered to the bottom shelf of a large wooden cabinet beneath a window. More than a decade after her mother's death, it still holds a large collection of Johanna's CDs, ones that Kate hadn't thought of for years, couldn't bear to think of. They were all recordings from the great American songbook—Kern, Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Ellington, Lerner and Loewe, Porter, Arlen—that her mother had adored. She had called them her soul food. Kate had risen from the chair, knelt on the floor and begun thumbing through the CDs, stopping at some and humming a few measures before moving on. It was then, as she held _Heat Wave_ in one hand and a recording of _Pal Joey_ in the other, that inspiration had struck. She had stood up and done something that she hadn't in a very, very long time: she smiled. She had realized what she was going to do, even if it was insanity, or folly: she would apologize to Castle with a book, a small book that she would write.

Now she's out in the warm early morning sun, looking at a notebook full of blank pages. She puts in her earbuds and begins listening to various versions of one of the two songs that she had just downloaded: "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," from Rodgers and Hart's show _Pal Joey_. First up is Lady Gaga, and Kate likes it, but it's a little too powerful, a bit too confident. And it doesn't sit right, because Lady Gaga is not someone her mother heard. She moves on to Streisand: it's gorgeous, but she stretches words and she strikes Kate as coy, which was definitely not Johanna's style. The inimitable Ella Fitzgerald is next, and Kate could have that on a loop for hours, but there's a fourth that she wants to sample. The minute she hears Frank Sinatra, she knows this is the one for her current mood. It's silk, it's satin, it's sex. How had she not paid attention to these three lines before?

 _Couldn't sleep  
_ _And wouldn't sleep  
_ _Until I could sleep where I shouldn't sleep_

How had she not even noticed them before? Maybe because they had never been so painfully on point before. Until she could sleep where she shouldn't sleep. Because that's where she wants to sleep, where's she's aching to sleep. In Castle's bed. With Castle. The man she has all but banished.

She's going to listen to two songs from _Pal Joey_ while she writes. There's "Bewitched," because she loves the melody, because the title is an eerily appropriate description of her emotional and mental state, and now, now those three lines. The other is "I Could Write a Book," which will, if she doesn't completely fuck up what could be the best thing that ever happened to her, be a perfect description of Castle and her. Together. These songs that her mother loved will occupy the back of her mind. They will be the backdrop, part of the time, as she writes. She had turned on Castle because of her mother's case, and now her mother will, she hopes, help lead her back to him. Mom, meet Rick. Castle, here's my mother. Here's me.

She opens her notebook. Sinatra has finished being bewitched, and what starts to play now is Miles Davis's rendition of "I Could Write a Book," with her beloved Coltrane on tenor sax. No one's singing, so she supplies the lyrics: "If they asked me, I could write a book about the way you walk and whisper and look." Oh yeah, she could do that. She'll have no trouble describing the way Castle walks, whispers and looks. She could do with some more of the whispering right now, the way it wraps around her ear and snakes down the back of her neck when he's standing behind her at the murder board, or at her desk. But still, how does she have the balls—the ovaries, she amends, as she laughs—to write a book for a best-selling author? If he plays cop can she play writer? That's not it. She's not sure. But she's a voracious reader, and she may not be a writer, but she is going to write a book about them, about how he irritated the crap out of her and got under her skin and into her bloodstream and now she wants him. She needs him. And she's sorry that she has screwed everything up so badly. She is so, so sorry.

She picks up her pen. "When he walked into her life, it was less of a walk than an invasion. He was a cocky bastard, and he all but crowed."

TBC

 **A/N** I know that Lady Gaga hadn't yet recorded "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" at the time this story is set; I hope that you will indulge me.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

 _I could write a preface on how we met  
_ _So the world would never forget.  
_ —Lorenz Hart

Is that all right? An okay beginning? She's already a Swiss cheese of insecurities and she has written exactly two sentences. How the hell does Castle do this, anyway?

She wonders if she should switch to a pencil, so she could erase things. Crossing things out with a pen is so messy. She has a nice cedar pencil that is infused with lily of the valley, so it smells heavenly. On the other hand, crossing things out implies critical thinking, revisions—it's so writerly. Well, she's not dropping the idea of a pencil yet. It's good to have options. Maybe she should go in and find that scented one, which she's pretty sure is in an old jam jar next to the kitchen phone.

Two minutes later, after retrieving the pencil and sharpening it to a perfect point, she's heading for her father's little work room. Yeah, there it is, some very fine sandpaper. She makes a few passes over the pencil to bring out the flowery smell, and holds it under her nose: ahhhhh, yum. But then she brings the pencil down and shakes her head: ahhhhh, shit. She has written—she counts in her head—all of twenty-six words and she's already procrastinating? Suck it up, Kate. If it didn't hurt so much to stomp back to the deck, she would. Instead, she settles for a moderately-less-shuffling-than-yesterday walk, sits down in her chair and puts the incriminatory pencil on the table. She'll stick to the pen. For now.

"When he first walked into her life, it was less of a walk than an invasion. He was a cocky bastard, and he all but crowed. Oh, yeah, cock of the walk, all right. That expression could have been invented just for him.

"A young woman had been murdered, her body posed in a style that was straight out of one of his books. She—Detective Kate Beckett, NYPD—went to the fancy rooftop party for his latest mystery to question him—Richard Castle, writer—to see if he knew anything, had any ideas. Beckett still remembers his opening line: he was waving a Sharpie at her, the one he had just been using to sign the surgically enhanced breasts of a bunch of giggling partygoers, and asked her, 'Where would you like it?' Yeah, well her completely natural breasts were covered up, thanks. Had she not been brought up to be polite, were she not an officer of the law, she'd have told him exactly where she'd like that Sharpie: pointed end up, directly into an orifice in his body, not hers.

"He drove her insane on that case. He was totally unprofessional, made all kinds of suggestive remarks from the other side of the table after she hauled him in to the precinct. He stole papers from her desk, for which she arrested him in the New York Public Library. And he liked it! The ass thought it was hilarious when he should have been, at the very least, chagrined. And then, before the paperwork on the case was done, Castle was permanently installed next to her desk. His good buddy the I-have-him-on-speed-dial mayor had spoken to the brass and gotten them to agree to let Castle shadow her. For research. For a book.

"He really did drive her crazy, case after case, that first year. Part of what made her insane—which she is admitting now under self-administered oath, because she has pledged from this day forward to be honest with him—was that he was really helpful. He had fifty ideas for every one of hers. They were juvenile, stupid, freaky, hubristic, and outlandish, but they were also provocative in the best sense. Castle provoked Beckett into thinking a different way, to look at every element of a homicide investigation from a different angle. Sometimes one of his ideas was outright brilliant. But she didn't dare tell him, or he'd have spent the rest of the day preening those gorgeous cock feathers of his."

She gasps and drops the pen as if it had given her a 500-volt shock. She wrote _that_? She can't even look at those words, gorgeous and cock, side by side, without blushing. Without all sorts of images flooding her brain and staying there. No amount of shaking her head will dislodge them. Should she include that, as part of the book, or omit it? Four paragraphs into her project and she has a new respect for Castle and what he does. What's in, what's out, where's the balance? Where's the cadence and the form and the tension and the continuity? What's off, what's on? She throws down the pen and rubs both hands across her face. She needs some coffee, but she can't. Her nerves are shot.

She walks to the kitchen, takes a bottle of water from the fridge, and rests gingerly against the counter for a moment before walking back outside. Walking, she thinks, as she sits down again. She has to write about how Castle walks. She puts her iPod earbuds back in and calls up a live performance of Harry Connick Jr. singing "I Could Write a Book," which she chose over the one he had done years before for the soundtrack of _When Harry Met Sally_. They're both swingy, but the live one is much more romantic, so committed. So much the way she's feeling right now. She likes the sound of "walk" when Connick sings it here, with a suggestion of a caress. She opens her notebook.

"Beckett was always interested in the way Castle walked. His gait was self-assured, but sometimes it had an almost undetectable underlay of hesitancy. She was surprised when she first noticed it, near the end of the first year that they worked together. He always seemed so confident, and his walk reflected it, but that was a case that hit close to home for him. A little girl had been kidnapped, and kidnappings so often have the worst possible outcome. He had to have been thinking constantly about Alexis during the investigation. That anxiety would account for some of the hesitancy, but not all of it. The rest was Castle's reaction to the appearance of FBI agent Will Sorenson, her former boyfriend. You could have made a sandwich out of the testosterone those two emanated.

"But honestly? What Beckett loves most is when Castle is walking and then turns partway, his feet planted on the floor, to say something sweet or funny to her. It's the way his hips tilt and his shoulders pull back a little. It's as if his body is asking a question and laughing at the same. It's seductive. Very seductive. Like Harry Connick's 'walk'.

"And what about talk? Does anyone talk as much as Castle? The Chatty Cathy doll that Beckett's mother had owned when she was a girl, and which she had saved for Kate, was reticent compared to Castle. Beckett used to stare at the back his head to see if there was a pull string nestled in that thick hair of his that activated his nonstop talking. Funny, but somewhere in the course of their unusual partnership, she stopped minding his loquaciousness. She'd been something of a Chatty Cathy herself, before. Before her mother's murder shut her down. Beckett is almost sure that she knows when she began to love the way Castle talks. It was last year, when they went to interview that skeevy sports agent, Bobby Fox, after the murder of his client Cano Vega. She had used the word veritable, and Castle called her sexy for it. He meant it, she could tell. She flirted with him by saying 'You should hear me say "fallacious",' but she also melted. She was suddenly a big mush ball, and thank God he hadn't realized it. He was probably too busy running 'fallacious' through the X-rated part of his imagination.

"When Castle's talking moves down a notch, when it morphs into a sinuous whisper, she has a hard time controlling her breathing. It's as though his whisper is a conduit for endorphins, sending them straight into her bloodstream. A couple of times he has whispered something and his breath hit the erogenous zone just below her ear. She'd been halfway to an orgasm before she managed to excuse herself and calmed down in the ladies room."

Kate stops writing. If Castle only knew what she occasionally had to resort to in the ladies room. Nah, he has a great imagination, she doesn't have to spell it out. But when he reads this, will he start whispering all the time? Now that he knows her secret? Oh, what the hell, she wouldn't mind being in that semi-orgasmic state a lot. Or better, a complete orgasmic state, in the bed where she shouldn't sleep. This isn't the best time to be having such thoughts, when there's nothing that can be done about them. Besides, she has to write about the way he looks. She had listened to Tony Bennett's "I Could Write a Book" already, but she takes another swig of water and returns to it briefly. It's the way he sings "look." He whispers it, lets it float out into the ether. It could be circling the cabin right now. Looooooook, very delicate on the K. Spellbinding. Well. She bends over her notebook.

"Castle likes to say that he is ruggedly handsome. Beckett pretends to scoff, but he's right. And he's wrong. Because he's definitely handsome, but he's not really rugged. He's solid, he's sexily massive, but he's not outdoorsy or tough. Beckett thinks his eyes are everything. They're a very changeable blue, and very expressive. They crinkle when he laughs. She will never forget, can't imagine it ever fading from her memory bank, the way his eyes looked one night last winter, when he and she were pretending to be a drunk couple so that they could get by the man who was guarding Hal Lockwood's filthy warehouse. Castle grabbed her face and kissed her the way no one had ever kissed her before. It wasn't his lips and his mouth and a trace of his tongue, much as they did everything to her, but his eyes. The longing in them. The trust in them. The light in them. The passion in them. And she did him such a disservice, has been doing him such a disservice, by refusing to acknowledge everything that was in his eyes and in that kiss. He showed up in her apartment a few months later and challenged her about it, accused her of burying herself in her mother's murder, and she still wouldn't talk about it. Wouldn't give in to those eyes that were angry and wounded and still full of love. She wouldn't trust him, and that's all he had asked. Looked at her with those beautiful eyes, and she wouldn't do it. She told him they were over when they hadn't even begun, not really."

Kate sighs, and turns her notebook facedown on the table. This wasn't the direction that she had meant to take. This part should have been fun and light, and it had started out that way. And then it had taken a sharp turn, like the middle act of a three-act play. What if her book—if she can even presume to call it a book—isn't enough? What if she sends it to Castle and he returns it, unopened? She hates herself, and now she's crying, on the deck of the cabin where things used to be very happy and her mother played American standards like "I Could Write a Book" and they sang them together.

TBC

 **A/N** Don't worry, things will get better. Thank you very much for the reviews, faves and follows! They're cheering me on.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

 _And the simple secret of the plot  
Is just to tell them that I love you a lot  
_—Lorenz Hart

Kate had gone indoors to wash her face, and she's peering into the bathroom mirror. She's been writing about how much she loves the way Castle looks, but what about her? She looks like the tenth circle of hell. She's so gaunt that she could open a can of tomato paste with her cheekbones, she has deep, dark bags under her eyes, and her hair is dull and straggly. She looks fifty times worse than she had the morning after her surgery, when Castle had come to see her, carrying a vase of flowers. She had told him, "You're staring at me. I must look really bad." And he had said, "No. I just never thought I'd see you again."

He hadn't, but only because she hadn't allowed it. What would he think if he saw her now? She pulls up the front of her loose T shirt and winces at the ugly scar between her breasts. It's still livid, even if it's more pink than the purple it had been. And what about her breasts? She used to think they were fine, but with all the weight that she has lost, she's veering on flat-chested. Castle loves boobs, even if they're half silicone. Two years ago they had gone to a plastic surgeon's office on a case and when a 34D client walked by, his eyes were spinning like something out of a cartoon. She had almost offered him a Kleenex to wipe the drool off his chin. Now she hangs her head and lets her T shirt drop before she returns to the deck.

He'd thought he'd never see her again? He definitely won't if she keeps this up. She looks out to the thick stand of trees, shimmering with new leaves, and chews on the inside of her cheek. What if she called him? After so much time, would he answer? If he did, what would she even say? It's summer now, so he's probably in the Hamptons with some babe in a bikini—or worse, in nothing at all. Not that he'd think that's worse, of course.

"SHUT UP!" She screams so loudly that every feathered and furry thing within a mile must have recoiled, and so violently that her chest vibrates painfully. She sits quietly, lets her breathing return to normal, and uncurls her body until she's sitting straight up in her chair. "Your pity party is officially over, Kate," she says to the birds and squirrels, if they're even there. If she hasn't scared them away permanently, too. "It should have been lights out a while ago, but okay. No more."

She looks over what she has written so far, giving particular attention to the last part about her shameful behavior to Castle just before Captain Montgomery was killed. She can make this right, please God, she can set it right. She has to acknowledge to herself and to Castle that he has changed, that he's not the arrogant jerk he was when she met him. She loves him, and no matter how badly she has treated him, he loves her. Or he did. What if the bond has broken, and he's put her behind him? She finds something on her iPod that she hasn't played yet, another song altogether, from a CD of Barbara Cook that her mother had bought a few years before she died and played over and over. When Kate flipped open the box early this morning and saw that her favorite song in the collection had been written the year that Johanna was born, she felt as if a benison had settled on her shoulders, like a velvet cloak. It's "Make the Man Love Me." Ain't that the truth, she murmurs as listens to the ballad. I have to make the man love me, as I do him. Make him love me again. The song is gorgeous; it's honeyed, it's plaintive, it's a direct hit to the heart. Wow, she thinks, as pen meets paper again, where do you suppose that little metaphor came from, Kate? A direct hit to the heart.

"Beckett still feels the sting of telling him to get out, to disappear from her life. And this is what she wants Castle to know: she loves him. It's as simple as that. Doesn't know why she had to make it so hard. Maybe they're complicated—okay, they're complicated—but love isn't. She wants him to know that she remembers every word that he choked out after she fell to the ground on that beautiful, terrible afternoon in the cemetery. She hangs on to them now as if they were a rope trailing from a boat. They keep her afloat. Does he remember it all as clearly as she? 'Kate, please. Stay with me, Kate. Don't leave me, please. Stay with me, okay? Kate, I love you. I love you, Kate.' There's nothing complex there; only word is more than a syllable.

"At first Beckett told herself that Castle hadn't meant it. She was dying; he had to have thought that she'd never hear or see another thing on this Earth, so he did the generous thing and sent her on her way with something loving. That was all: an expression of kindness from a man she has come to realize is very kind. The more time passes, the more she believes that it's true. It was merely kindness. She has to believe that, because how could he love her when she had been so cruel?

"But being cooped up, even in the glories of nature, can have unexpected consequences. For weeks, Beckett had closed in on herself, tighter and tighter, like a plant trying to protect itself through a long and bitter winter. And then one day—today—something happened. The snow retreated, the ice cracked. Beckett thought: Castle had meant it. He had meant what he said as the blood leached from her dress blues into the green grass. Because that grand gesture from the man who is the king of grand gestures was the most intimate thing she had ever witnessed. He called her Kate. Every time he said her name it was Kate, not Beckett. He may be noisy and jokey and irritating, but in fact he is a man who chooses words with infinite care. And when she was shot in front of him, he had no time to choose or to consider. He simply implored her to live, and confided that he loved her.

"Beckett—she might be Beckett to him again, not Kate—can tell him, simply, a lot of things that make her love him. He makes her laugh. (I LOVE YOU) He's a chicken in insignificant situations, but when it counts, like when he defused that bomb, he's insanely brave. She wishes that she had dragged him home and had her wicked way with him that day. (I LOVE YOU) He saved a bar, one of the quirky places that makes New York New York, from annihilation-by-franchise. (I LOVE YOU) He started a scholarship in her mother's name. (I LOVE YOU) He brought up his daughter all by himself. (I LOVE YOU) He found the man who killed her mother. (I LOVE YOU) He takes care of his own mother. (I LOVE YOU) He apologizes. (I LOVE YOU) He let her win at poker. (I LOVE YOU) He writes books about her. (I LOVE YOU) He's even sexier than he thinks he is. (I LOVE YOU) He grew up. (I LOVE YOU) He's goofy. (I LOVE YOU) He believes in her. (I LOVE YOU) He bought her a beautiful dress. He bought her a hundred coffees. He gave her hope. (I LOVE YOU)"

Kate puts her pen down. She starts humming "I Could Write a Book" and catches herself grinning. "I'm writing a book for Castle," she says. She's happy. Oh, my.

TBC

 **A/N** Thank you for your enthusiasm for this little story of Beckett's little book.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

 _Then the world discovers as my book ends  
How to make two lovers of friends.  
_—Lorenz Hart

Self-awareness—confession, declaration, realization, whatever—is apparently a wondrous soporific. Kate woke up not long ago, nine hours after tottering off to bed. She had fallen asleep so quickly and unexpectedly that she hadn't even taken her nighttime pain medicine, and her mind is clearer than it has been in months. Years. Possibly, specifically, since March 9, 2009, the day that she met Castle.

Sipping coffee, she looks out the kitchen window. "Morning, birds," she says dreamily. "Morning, squirrels. Little squirrlies. Thanks for coming back. I'm sorry I yelled yesterday." Oh, God, she thinks, if Castle knew that she was welcoming rodents, cooing at them, she'd never hear the end of it. But they're squirrels, and they're cute. "Not as adorable as Castle, though," she whispers.

She has eaten an egg and two pieces of toast with butter and strawberry jam, her biggest and most satisfying meal since her shooting. Kate has so much good food in her system that she's allowing herself another cup of coffee, which she has put on a tray with her notebook, pen, pencil (just in case), and iPod to take to her perch on the deck. She's determined to finish the book today; there's not much more to go. Once she has settled in, she opens her notebook and begins.

"Beckett is sure that the best and rarest kind of friendship is the one that sneaks up on you. It has happened only once in her life, and she's certain that it never will again. It doesn't need to; once is all she wants, and more than she had ever expected. With this kind of friendship you suddenly discover that someone has become part of the fabric of your life. The fabric of your being, really. The warp and the weft, woven so tightly that you're amazed that you hadn't noticed before.

"She had looked straight at him for years without knowing it. Had stood with him, and sat with him, all unknowing. At her desk and the murder board, in the cruiser and the break room. Over corpses and coffee. In alleys and basements and bars and labs. On roofs and fire escapes. In her apartment, in his. With blood on their hands or egg on their faces. In every season and at every hour. In bookstores and ballrooms, freezers and magic shops, swimming pools and baseball fields, laundry rooms and sex shops. In three-star restaurants and germ-factory dives. At parties and wakes, in libraries and hospitals. 'What do you know?' she had asked her astonished self yesterday. 'It's Castle.' Her best friend is Castle. Her once-in-a-lifetime friend is Castle."

There's something about writing it down that makes it real, that dispels the doubts that had caught on her rough edges. It's something she never imagined, yet here it is. She hasn't listened to any music this morning, but there's a track she's been saving and this is the right moment for it. It's Frank Sinatra's first recording of "I Could Write a Book," not the smart-alecky one he did in the movie of _Pal Joey_ a few years later. It's direct and sweet and honest. When he sings "as my book ends," it sounds like "as my bookends." That's what she thinks she and Castle are, or could be. Bookends. Two halves, bracketing something, holding a story between them, expanding, contracting, expanding again. She smiles. It's time for the final paragraph.

"A friend like that knows your mind and your heart. A lover knows your body and should know your soul. Castle already knows Beckett's heart and mind, as she does his, but what about body and soul? That's what she wants to give him: all of her, every bit of her, and she hopes beyond hope that that's what he will give her in return. Because if having a friendship like theirs is rare, just imagine what these two friends could be as lovers."

Kate sighs a long, soft breath of relief. She picks up her coffee and finds not only that it's cold but that she hasn't drunk it at all. Wow. That's one for the books. Wait 'til she tells Castle. She hopes that she gets to tell Castle. She closes the notebook, surprised at how many pages she had filled, and runs her hands over the cover, a slightly shiny heavy paper with a beautiful design of small flowers. She's going to wrap it up in paper, tie it up with a ribbon. Checking her watch, she notes happily that it's nine o'clock so she can call a neighbor and ask for a ride into town. It will be the first time that she's left the property since her father drove her here a few weeks ago. It's something she must do; this is not an errand for someone else. She'll take the book to the post office herself.

Before that, before that monumental step, she has to write a letter to include with the book. She goes to the desk in the living room and pulls out a drawer where she had stored a box of handsome blue stationery that her father had bought for her. She was supposed to use it to thank people who had sent her flowers and she's ashamed that she hasn't written a single one, but she will now, as soon as she gets back from town. Five minutes later, after speaking to the kind neighbor who will pick her up at ten, she sits at the desk to write a short note.

"Dear Castle,

There is no adequate way to apologize for the way that I have behaved towards you. Believe me, I've rejected hundreds of them.

But yesterday I had an epiphany, or a series of epiphanies. The first, which led to the others, happened way before sunrise, so I guess you'd call it the dawn of an idea. I was about to read _Heat Wave_ again—one of many agains, but I've never let you know that, so it's another thing for which I apologize—when I noticed a shelfful of my mother's CDs and began to look at them. She had a huge collection of American standards that she shared with me as soon as I could sing along. Listening to them since her death had been too painful, until that moment, when I had _Heat Wave_ in one hand and _Pal Joey_ in the other. Mom's favorite song (and mine) from that show is "I Could Write a Book," and I suddenly knew what to do. I'd write you a book.

Some nerve, right? For me to write you a book. But I did. I listened to a few songs while I was writing, mostly a lot of versions of that favorite. You are the kindest person I know. I hope that you have enough forgiveness in you to read this, but I'll understand if you don't.

Kate"

Half an hour later, she's in the post office. She has placed the neatly wrapped notebook and the letter inside a Priority Mail Express box. She has addressed it to his Broome Street loft, but what if he's in the country and doesn't see the package for weeks? Should she send it to the Hamptons instead? She doesn't want to mail it to his beach house if there's a bedwarmer with him. She closes her eyes.

Shit. Shit. She can't bear that creeping doubt, that poisonous tendril that's winding around her. She's going to rip it out by the goddamn root. She thinks for a moment before pulling out her phone. She can't believe she's doing this, but she calls the doorman at Broome Street to find out if Castle's there. Yes, the doorman tells her, Mr. C. had said that he'd be here all week. She claims it's some official police business, no need to mention it to Mr. C. until the package arrives. She prays that the NYPD gods will not strike her down for such a lie.

At the counter, Kate hands the box to the clerk, who assures her that overnight service comes with a guarantee. The addressee will receive the package by eleven tomorrow morning.

"Would you like any additional services?" he asks.

"Um, what are those?"

He goes through a list, and when he says, "signature confirmation," she puts her hand up.

"Let me think a minute," she asks. Should she do that? Is it too needy? Oh, crap, she's needy. She wants the signature, the tracking, everything. "Yes, please," she says.

The trip to town has exhausted her, and she sits on a bench outside the post office until her neighbor comes back from the grocery store. They make pleasant small talk on the way back, and as soon as Kate's home she collapses on her bed and falls asleep.

Her nap is not refreshing. She's too keyed up, and she knows that the package won't reach Castle's building for almost twenty-four hours. She spends most of them fretting. She can't read much, or listen to much, or eat much. She tells herself that she's not regressing. Pages of clichés are flipping in her mind: the die is cast; what's done is done; it's out of your hands; there's no turning back; let it be; he will or he won't. "Shut up!" she says, not loud enough this time to traumatize the wildlife, at least, and puts her head in her hands.

Somehow she gets through the day and night, and into the next morning. A track of the package tells her that the box arrived at ten forty-seven a.m. She allows herself to check on the signature only every fifteen minutes. By the time it's two o'clock and there's still nothing, she's having a hard time coping with her anxiety. At two-thirty, she sees that Castle has signed.

And then nothing. Nothing. Nothing but that fork on that fucking clock, scraping and clicking at the top of each hour. She is more depressed than she's ever been. She's black with bleakness. She's green with jealousy, since obviously Castle has found someone else. She's red with rage. She wonders how many stupid color metaphors she can torment herself with before she loses it.

She does lose it, a little after eight. She's crying great heaving sobs. She's choking, which hurts her chest. Her nose is running and she swipes it ineffectually with the hem of her T shirt. And then her phone rings. She reaches for it; when she sees Castle's name and face on the screen, her hand begins to shake.

"Castle?" She sounds like someone who is crying, because she is.

"Beckett? Kate? Are you all right?"

She swears she hears birds in the background. He must have gone to the Hamptons. She squeezes her free hand between her knees and grits her teeth. "I'm okay. Um, where are you, anyway?"

"By your mailbox, at the end of your road. May I come up?"

What? She squints at the screen. "Sure."

She figures that she has ninety seconds before Castle arrives. It's just enough time to wash her face, run a brush through her hair and put on a T shirt that's not covered in tears and snot. When she hears the car engine, she peeks out the window and walks as confidently as possible to the door.

He's about thirty feet from the porch when she opens the door and stops there. The light is behind her, and he thinks she looks like an angel. Exactly like an angel, a really skinny but incredibly beautiful angel in a T shirt. Because she's backlit, he can't see her expression, but as he closes the gap between them he can tell that her eyes are red.

They're both tentative, and silent, but she waves her arm to gesture him inside. They're at the edge of the living room, and Kate's looking at the floor. He has her book in his left hand, and uses his right to cup her chin, very softly.

"Kate?"

She raises her eyes, but not her head.

"May I hug you?"

She nods. "Not too hard, Castle. I've still got—" she waves a hand over her rib cage, "all this."

He takes her in his arms. She's so slight that he thinks he could wrap around her twice.

She has never felt anything like it. Castle is a wall of warmth. She can feel his heart beating against her, even though he is being careful about holding her too tight. She tucks her head under his chin and they both begin gently rocking.

He whispers into her ear. "You've been crying. Why were you crying?"

"It doesn't matter. I stopped."

"It does matter. Everything matters."

"It's because you got my book."

He pulls back and tilts her head up. "You're crying because I got your book?"

She's looking away from him. "You had it for hours but you didn't call, so I thought you hated me."

He sighs, and then he's very quiet. "Kate, can we sit down on the sofa over there?" Without waiting for an answer, voiced or otherwise, he takes her hand and guides her to the sofa. "Can you look at me?"

They're sitting now, and he's still holding her hand. He takes a breath and begins. "When I got the package, I was afraid to open it. I don't know why. What could be in it? Were you returning a book of mine? I couldn't bear it. So I went to my office and poured myself a Scotch and opened the box. I looked at the envelope for a long time, for half a glass worth, at least. And then I read your letter and I didn't need the Scotch anymore. The only thing I needed was you, but not before I read your book. And then I drank two of the strongest cups of coffee in recorded history to make sure I was completely sober when I got behind the wheel. I drove at exactly the speed limit the whole time, because I was damned if I was going to get pulled over by a cop on my way here. The only cop I want near me is you."

"Yeah?" she says, still a little wobbly. "Really?"

"Really."

"So, my book. Was it okay? Are you okay with it?"

"Am I okay with it? Best book I've ever read, and I've already read it three times. I have another question for you."

"Oh, okay. Ask me anything, I guess," she says, feeling very bashful. "I mean, you can ask me anything."

"May I kiss you? I promise to be careful."

"Not too careful," she says, with the most beguiling smile he has ever seen.

His kiss and her kiss start out gently, but it's hard to be gentle when repressed desire is released from a long prison term. They're all but swallowing each other's tongues; they're biting lips and nipping ears and kissing necks and grabbing hair. But when Castle runs his hand under her shirt and across the bottom of her rib cage, Kate gasps.

"No."

Pulling his hand back sharply, he looks both guilty and wounded and she quickly wraps her hand around his.

"Not no, Castle. Not no the way you must think. No because the incision in my side hurts and I don't want you to see me naked for the first time like this."

"I'm sorry, I—"

She puts two fingers on his lips. "No sorry, Castle. No saying you're sorry. Not when you're making me so happy, all right? And I hate to say this, but I'm so tired. I'm so turned on but I'm so tired." She inhales deeply and steels herself, looking into his eyes. "Will you come to bed with me? Really, just bed." She's embarrassed to be blushing. "It's all I can manage right now, until I'm stronger, but will you sleep there with me?"

He can't quite find his voice at first, but he finally says, "Can I carry you there? It'll help you conserve your strength."

And they both laugh, and he scoops her up and takes her to her room. They brush their teeth together, wearing only their underwear and T shirts and perfectly matched expressions of giddiness. And they get in her bed, with him behind her, his arm around her, the only wall she needs. And they talk very softly, for a little while, and they fall asleep.

TBC

 **A/N** Thank you, everyone, for your enthusiasm. Epilogue ahead!


	5. Epilogue

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

 _We'll be close as pages in a book  
My love and I.  
_—Dorothy Fields

 **A/N** At the request of several readers: the kitchen clock has been killed. There will be no homicide charge.

Castle remembers June 20, 2011 as if it were yesterday, except that it's 365 yesterdays. Correction, 366, since this is a leap year.

The doorman handed it to him that day, when he came home from lunch with his agent. It was an ordinary box, a bland white Priority Mail box with red and blue lettering and a nick in the corrugated cardboard just below the postage stamp. He was in the elevator, tapping the box against his hip, when he saw the familiar handwriting in the upper left-hand corner, and his knees buckled. He slid right down to the floor, and when the doors opened he crawled out. He staggered through the loft to his office and put the box, the one that had looked so harmless just a moment ago, on the corner of his desk. It was toxic. Whatever it was, it would poison him. Still, he had to open it. After all, what could she have put in there that would hurt him any more than he already had been? He needed help to do it, though, distilled help: three ounces of Macallan.

He can still feel the tug of the zip tab on the box. He yanked it, hard, and a blue envelope fell out. He picked it up and decided to sit in his chair to open it, and he's glad he did. Saved himself another trip to the floor. He read the letter, read it again to make sure that he understood it, and then took the little package from the box. The mundane box that held a notebook wrapped in blue tissue paper, tied with a white ribbon. The no-frills box that changed his life. He read the letter twice, but he read the notebook three times. Well, three times that day, but at least a hundred since then. A couple of times a week, even though he has it memorized.

After his third reading, he got in the car and drove to Beckett. When he woke up the next morning with her nestled against him, asleep but still holding his hand, he realized that it was the first day of summer. He was going to spend all 1,440 minutes of the longest day of the year with Kate. He cooked; read aloud to her; changed a ceiling light bulb, which he freely admitted was the outer limit of his handyman skills; waded in the lake with her, and dug a hole and buried what she called the stupid fucking kitchen clock. After the third day she made him go home to see his daughter. But he came back the next week and the next and the next, commuting until she was strong enough to return to the city for good, strong enough to go back to her job, strong enough to share a bed with him and do more than whisper that she loved him. Much as he loved hearing it, he also loved being able to act on it. He has never had sex like this in his life, but he's never loved anyone like this, either.

On Valentine's Day she moved in with him, but it's today, June 20, 2012, that he wants to mark in a special and memorable way. A small but important way, small because that's what Kate would like. A year ago today he got the book that she had written for him, and today is the summer solstice, just as it had been the first time he woke up next to her in bed. He's not spending all 1,440 minutes of it with her—she's at the precinct and he begged off on the pretext of having to work on the edits of his latest Nikki Heat novel—because he has to attend to the final details of the evening. Kate doesn't usually like surprises, but he thinks that she'll like this one.

One day last summer while she was taking a nap, he listened to the songs that she had downloaded on her iPod and played while she was writing her book. He did it because he wanted to put himself in her head, but he also tucked the list away in a mental file folder that he could consult later. Later came about a month ago, when he hatched his plan for June 20. This morning he had gone to collect the present that he's had made for her, as well twenty-six roses. He's cooking an extravagant dinner for the two of them, but the present is the centerpiece, both figuratively and literally: the roses will be grouped around it.

Having finished the initial food prep and set the table, Castle goes to his desk to write a note. It's stationery that he had sneaked out of the desk at the cabin, the same paper she had used for her note to him. He's forcing himself to keep it short, as she had.

"Dear Kate,

A year ago today, I got your book. It was the most profound apology that I've ever received, as well as the most romantic. And best-written.

I love that you wrote while you listened to some of your mother's favorite songs. I feel as if it's my bridge to her, to the two of you. I have to make a confession: last year I briefly absconded with your iPod so that I could have the aural background of your book. I was so blown away by Barbara Cook singing "Make the Man Love Me" that I looked up that CD and found that everything on it has lyrics by Dorothy Fields. I didn't know anything about her, but I do now. She worked with an incredible range of composers from the 1920s to the 1970s. She won a Tony and an Oscar. She flourished in a male-dominated world. Just like your mother. Just like you.

Every couple should have a song, and I think I found ours, on that CD. "Close as Pages in a Book."

 _We'll be close as pages in a book  
_ _My love and I.  
_ _So close, we can share a single look,  
_ _Share every sigh.  
_ _So close that before I hear your laugh  
_ _My laugh breaks through._

It was written in 1944, but that's us, isn't it?

I love your book, the one you wrote for me. I love you.

Castle"

He folds the paper in half, puts it in the envelope and tucks it under the white ribbon that's tied around her present. It's wrapped in blue tissue paper, and it's now in the middle of the dining room table, surrounded by twenty-six bud vases, each holding a white rose.

He had told her this morning that he was making dinner, and asked her to text him when she was on her way home. He hears from her a little after six, and half an hour later she walks through the door straight to the kitchen.

"Castle?" she asks, slipping her arms around his waist and trying to look in the pots on the stove. "What are you making? It smells fantastic."

"It's a surprise."

"What have I told you about surprises?"

"Okay, there's a spinach salad, corn cakes with mushrooms and hanger steak with Swiss chard and roast fingerling potatoes. Satisfied?" He turns his head and kisses her under the ear.

"Yes. I thought you'd just make pasta. This is really something."

"Yeah, well, surprise. And the wine's open, on the table, if you'd pour us some."

It's only a few seconds later that he hears the sharp intake of breath. "Castle!"

He takes the few steps to the table and says innocently, "Yes?"

She's looking flummoxed, flushed and flummoxed. "What is all this?"

"All this? It's dinner."

"I see that, but it's beautiful. But what's the occasion? Is this some Castle family ritual I don't know about? Except I see it's for just the two of us."

"You don't know? You didn't suspect?" He looks as if he's about to combust, happily combust, but combust.

"No." She's feeling a little embarrassed.

"Count the flowers, Beckett," he says, pointing to the roses.

She mutters a bit and then pronounces, "Twenty-six."

"What's the date today?"

"June twentieth."

"Right, the twentieth day of the sixth month, so twenty-six roses." She's looking confused, so he put his hand in the small of her back and guides her to her chair. "Please have a seat. I'll be right back."

Returning with two plates filled with a perfect spinach salad, he places one in front of her and the other at his setting, opposite her. "Dig in," he says cheerfully.

Beckett's expression has downgraded to hang-dog. "Castle, please tell me. I feel so guilty, like I've forgotten something."

He jumps from his chair. "No, Beckett, no. Oh, God, you're going to cry. Please don't cry, please."

So of course she does, and he wraps his arms around her as tightly as he can, as tightly as he had wanted to that first night last summer. "Shh, Kate, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, This was meant to be special. I'll tell you, okay?"

She sniffles. "Okay."

He goes back to his chair but draws it next to hers. "On June twentieth, 2011, exactly a year ago today, I came home and the doorman handed me a box that had come in the mail that morning. It was your book, the book you wrote me. The book that's the reason we're sitting here together like this, instead of in two separate apartments, being miserable." He puts his hand on her cheek. "Of course, a minute ago you looked pretty miserable, but you don't any more."

She gives him a watery smile. "I'm not. I'm happy. I'm so happy, Castle."

He squeezes her hand. "I was going to wait until we finished dinner to give you your present, but I don't want to wait any longer."

"You got me a _present_?" She looks dumbfounded.

"Yeah, I did." He reaches for the small box in the center of the table and hands it to her. "There's a note, Beckett. You should read that first."

He watches her face as she reads, tracks the movements of her eyes, the muscles at the edges of her lips.

She beams at him, and pulls his arm to her. "Close as pages in a book, huh?"

"That's us, Beckett."

"That's us, Castle. Do I get to unwrap my present now?"

"Please do." He doesn't think she notices that the paper is the same that she used a year ago. It doesn't matter. She has untied the ribbon and has the paper halfway off when she gasps.

"This is the box from the post office. The one I used." She has his hand in a death grip now. "You saved it? I can't believe it." She upends the box so that she can get at the package inside; it's also wrapped in blue tissue paper and bound in a white ribbon. She removes them both with one hand, since she's still hanging on to him with other, and then, "Oh," she says. "Oh. Oh." She runs her fingertips over the smooth, dark purple full-grain leather, again and again. It's a notebook. It's her book. The one she wrote for him.

"I had it bound for you, Kate," Castle says, unnecessarily. "I was afraid it was going to fall apart because I've read it so often." And suddenly she's in his lap, and she's kissing him, and she's crying all over again.

"Castle," she says, using her napkin to wipe her eyes. "This is the greatest present ever."

"It's for both of us, Kate," he says, and gives her a promise of a kiss. "It took us a while, didn't it? But we made two lovers of friends."

 **A/N** I'm going to miss writing this story. Thank you so much for reading along, and for all your kind words.


End file.
